Font nerds, rejoice: the Universal Typeface Experiment, launched by the pen company BIC, collects data around the world for “a constantly evolving, algorithmically produced font created by averaging hundreds of thousands of handwriting samples”:
Anyone with a touchscreen can help shape the Universal Typeface by linking their phone or tablet to the website and writing directly on the touchscreen – the lettering is quickly transferred to the Universal Typeface algorithm. As of this writing, more than 400,000 samples have been collected from around the world, and the resulting alphabet is … well, sort of boring. It turns out that averaging thousands of authentic expressions of individuality yields something that looks like a grade school writing sample. Contrasting the left-handed average with the right-handed average and gender averages and comparing industry averages—what’s a broker’s “B” look like compared to an artist’s?—reveals disappointingly similar results.
If there’s a lesson here, it’s that we’re not so different after all. That said, the collected samples allow for some fun comparisons. A more dramatic variance can be seen, for example, when the averages are broken down by nationality, because there are many fewer samples per country. It’s interesting to see the narrow “B” of Saudi Arabia versus the wide, curvy “B” of Romania.
(Image via Smithsonian and BIC)
The Dish 